School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Robert Barclay Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 10 families who named Robert Barclay Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 127 put it first and 117 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Hertfordshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

10

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

127 first preferences for 145 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Robert Barclay Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Robert Barclay Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Hertfordshire as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Hertfordshire, 21% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 314 of 1,496 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Hertfordshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hertfordshire ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Robert Barclay Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Robert Barclay Academy, 2017/18 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.64 per place 86 first choices 134 places 2018/19 0.7 per place 93 first choices 133 places 2019/20 0.73 per place 102 first choices 139 places 2020/21 0.72 per place 86 first choices 120 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 124 first choices 137 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 156 first choices 144 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 134 first choices 111 places 2024/25 1.22 per place 169 first choices 139 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 152 first choices 136 places 2026/27 0.88 per place 127 first choices 145 places
First preferences per place at Robert Barclay Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 127 first preferences for 145 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Robert Barclay Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 134 86 86 0.64
2018/19 133 93 93 0.7
2019/20 139 102 102 0.73
2020/21 120 86 86 0.72
2021/22 137 124 112 0.91
2022/23 144 156 126 1.08
2023/24 111 134 87 1.21
2024/25 139 169 120 1.22
2025/26 136 152 115 1.12
2026/27 145 127 117 0.88

Places offered

145

in 2026/27

Named first choice

127

399 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.1%

117 of 127

Offers to families outside the council

12%

17 of 145 offers

How close you had to live

Robert Barclay Academy filled its places in 2026, and 2,978m — 1.85 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the in priority area, not nearest school criterion.

Last place offered at

1.85 mi

2,978 metres, 2026

Under criterion

In Priority Area, Not Nearest School

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Hertfordshire Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

700

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

693

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

7

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

240

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Robert Barclay Academy has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Robert Barclay Academy reported 7 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Robert Barclay Academy from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 965 places 632 on roll 2017/18 965 places 616 on roll 2018/19 940 places 575 on roll 2020/21 940 places 630 on roll 2021/22 940 places 663 on roll 2022/23 940 places 701 on roll 2023/24 940 places 757 on roll 2024/25 940 places 786 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode EN11 8JY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143131).

Other contested secondary schools in Hertfordshire

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.